“[Frazier] makes an eloquent and impassioned argument for the United States government 's giving back the Black Hills to the Sioux. And he provides some artful digressions on Sioux ideals of heroism, on the Lakota language, and on Indian superstitions and lore . . . As for Mr. Frazier's accounts of his own travels, they are enlivened by a keen eye for detail, and the same delightful sense of the absurd that animated his humor collections.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“An astute, personal, and disarmingly frank assessment of life and conflict among the Oglala Sioux on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation . . . [A] remarkably thorough and thoroughly eclectic study.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Frazier's account of Pine Ridge and of his uncommon friendship with Le War Lance is engaging, resonant.” —Evan S. Connell

“No citizen interested in reservation life--or in human kindness and human troubles--should fail to read Ian Frazier's gripping story.” —Tony Hillerman

“A wonderful, painful guidebook to a bitter beautiful land. It all rang true to me.” —Martin Cruz Smith

“Funny, playful, sly, On the Rez may be the best and most truthful book about the American Indian available today.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“[Frazier] is like an archaeologist of social sensibilities, paying rapt attention to dialect, landscapes, sounds, and political quirks, then displaying them in artfully simple sentences.” —The New Yorker

“To render the complicated truth, to make a reader see . . . that something wonderful about the American Indian flourishes even in the midst of what one of the residents of Pine Ridge describes as 'just a slum' --that is very difficult. Frazier knows the difference between real emotion and its counterfeits. In his philosophy, there is room for sentiment, and in this book he makes good and evil palpable, and palpably intertwined.” —Tracy Kidder, The New York Times Book Review